Join the conversation at Boswell: Chris Jones with Mark Clements of Milwaukee Rep, Chloe Benjamin (The Immortalists) in conversation with Lucy Tan, Nickolas Butler in conversation with Mitch Teich

Monday, February 25, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Chris Jones, author of Rise Up!: Broadway and American Society from Angels in America to Hamilton, in conversation with Mark Clements

Chief theater critic and Sunday culture columnist of the Chicago Tribune, Chris Jones chats theater history with Mark Clements, Artistic Director of Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

Jones tells the story of Broadway’s renaissance, from the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, via the disaster that was Spiderman: Turn off the Dark, through the unparalleled financial, artistic and political success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. It is the story of the embrace of risk and substance, where the theater thrived by finally embracing the bold statement and inserting itself into the national conversation.

Chris Jones was in the theaters when and where it mattered and chronicles the era in a singularly creative way, tapping into the nexus of artistic innovation, the business of show business, new forms of audience engagement, and the political fevers that can emerge. Whether you booed or applauded for the many plays and musicals discussed in Rise Up!, there is no denying that Jones vividly captures the theater's new clout as it attempts change American society for the better.

Chris Jones is the chief theater critic and Sunday culture columnist of the Chicago Tribune. He is author of Bigger, Brighter, Louder: 150 Years of Chicago Theater and his work has appeared often in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Variety. He was named one of the most influential theater critics in America by American Theater and is a winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Mark Clements is an award-winning director and serves as Artistic Director of the Milwaukee Rep.

Tuesday, February 26, 7:00 pm, at Boswell:
Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists and Lucy Tan, author of What We Were Promised

Madison comes to Milwaukee! Lucy Tan and Chloe Benjamin, both Madison-based authors and graduates of UW-Madison’s MFA program, chat at Boswell.

Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists was one of the breakout novels of 2018, a New York Times bestseller that asks, “What would you do if you knew when you were going to die?” Entertainment Weekly picked The Immortalists as one of the ten best books of the year, and it's now #4 on The New York Times bestseller list in paperback.

Lucy Tan’s debut novel tells of a China-born couple who return to Shanghai as expats. Told in alternating voices by the couple and their housekeeper-turned-ayi, After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family settles into a luxurious serviced apartment in Shanghai and join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a radically transformed city. Chloe praised What We were Promised as a “compassionate and heartbreaking, funny and wise.”

Can't make our evening event? Lucy Tan will be at UWM's Garland Hall, 2441 E Hartford Ave, room 104, on Tuesday, February 26 at Noon. This event is presented by Asian Studies, the English Department, the Honors College, and the Center for International Education, and is moderated by Xin Huang, Assistant Professor of  Women's and Gender Studies.

Chloe Benjamin is author of The Immortalists. Her first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Wisconsin.

Lucy Tan received degrees from New York University and the University of Wisconsin, where she was awarded the 2016 August Derleth Prize. Her fiction has been published in Asia Literary Review and Ploughshares, where she was winner of the 2015 Emerging Writer's Contest.

We have a little break while Chris and I do publisher presentations in New York, but don't forget about...
Nickolas Butler, author of Little Faith, in conversation with Mitch Teich
Tuesday, March 5, 7:00 pm, at Boswell

Boswell is thrilled to host prize-winning Wisconsin author Nickolas Butler, whose previous novel was the much loved Shotgun Lovesongs, for a conversation with WUWM Lake Effect's Mitch Teich about the release of his latest, the story of a Wisconsin family grappling with the power and limitations of faith.

Lyle Hovde is living out his golden years in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence, Shiloh has finally come home, but she has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced wee Isaac has the ability to heal the sick. While reckoning with his own lack of faith, Lyle soon finds himself torn between unease and his desire to keep his daughter and grandson in his life.

Soon, the church’s radical belief system threatens Isaac’s safety, and Lyle is forced to make a decision from which the family may not recover. Set over the course of one year and beautifully evoking the change of seasons, Little Faith is a powerful and deeply affecting intergenerational novel about family and community, the ways in which belief is both formed and shaken, and the lengths we go to protect our own.

Nickolas Butler was raised in Eau Claire. He is a graduate of UW–Madison and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is the author of The Hearts of Men, Shotgun Lovesongs, and Beneath the Bonfire.